• Dale@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    LEO satellites decay very quickly every one of them will burn up in the atmosphere within 10 years. They need to be replaced constantly. As soon as spacex goes out of business these will all fall out of the sky.

          • Dale@lemmy.world
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            18 days ago

            Lmao I wish. Satellites and their components have to be “hardened” to survive extreme temperatures and radiation in space. There’s probably nothing on it you could disable with any laser you could buy. Plus there’s the matter of targeting them.

            • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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              18 days ago

              Now with lasers you buy perhaps, what about with the lasers you build?

              In the future where Federal Authority is concentrated on robbing and stealing elsewhere, I cannot imagine a high energy beam could not take these motherfuckers out.

              • 4am@lemmy.zip
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                18 days ago

                If you have the capability to build a laser that can focus enough energy, from the ground through the atmosphere, with enough precision to lock on to an LEO constellation member long enough to disable it, you’d probably already either be captured, or working for DoD.

                Also: great, you exploded it before reentry. Now we have a hundred thousand smaller, lighter fragments skipping off the atmosphere, disbursing randomly, and spinning around like hypersonic chaff bullets for actual worthwhile spacecraft and satellites to fly through, twinkling in infrared like a billion new streaky sparkles on those telescopes. It takes a lot longer for all that bullshit to rain down, and it pollutes just the same. Tell me, who were you fighting for again and why?

                This is like when the humans blacken the sky in the Matrix to defeat the machines. Yeah it wrecked the earth, but is also didn’t defeat them and they just found something else to exploit.

                • teyrnon@sh.itjust.works
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                  18 days ago

                  I mean I was trying to Broach a theoretical, completely academic, discussion about what could or could not take these satellites out.

    • Einskjaldi@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      I expect that we will get in orbit refueling to extend their life once you get a good nuclear and solar panel power tug with an electric thruster that can deliver fuel, they’re in a similar orbit if you just do that.

      • Dale@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Especially with the number of them it’s probably cheaper to just put up new satellites. LEO sats are designed to be temporary.

    • Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      sooo then this isn’t a problem if they all burn out eventually? hehe i’m just being pedantic of course

      • Dale@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        There’s reasonable hope at least that this is a problem that will solve itself, and unfortunately we have bigger problems to worry about.